Category Archives: Altered States of Consciousness

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In the year 5711, galactic archeologists discover an ancient and undecipherable text in excavations below the New Delphi Crystal. The text called, The Zaqurlite Manuscript is believed to be the key to the origins of humankind. No one can interpret the ancient text until Chiron, a young Janaforma lifebearer, with genetically enhanced language skills, begins to unravel the mysteries hidden in the text.

Chiron, an Oxford graduate student, is a uniquely gifted individual. At nineteen bio-years of age, she can learn any new language and its dialects in a few days time. Guaranteed a job when she graduates, she believes her future is cast in stone and that her life will be boring. Not until her personal life begins to unravel, right along with the fabric of the physical universe, does Chiron realize the strength of her freewill.

For centuries, cosmologists had warned that rifted-type spacecraft were thinning the fabric between dimensions. Not until the Orion Spur was littered with black holes and strange and hideous creatures came flying out of the fourth dimension do politicians admit the truth.

Caught in the wake of this continuing apocalyptic chaos, Chiron meets Parizade Géon, a Tyrowsian biodroid. Together they will struggle to survive the continuing annihilation of the Orion Spur. They will face many challenges, but none as fearsome as the winged creatures Géon calls the Veda kec Drone (“the eternal devourers”; language, Cuneate).

In the above picture, a single Fairly flares its bioluminescence as it deliberately passes between two spectral prisms. When a Fairly performs this trick, it’s capable of assuming many different shapes. Most shapes are beautiful and delicate to the third-dimensional eye. Little is known about these tiny creatures except their energy is highly concentrated and they are sentient. Maria Belle, an Analytical Behaviorist and 4th dimension expert, has been observing the Fairly for thirty years and tells us, “They possess playful natures and seem unafraid of third dimensional beings. Just like several other fourth-dimensional lifeforms, the Fairly are capable of light-speed travel, yet seem capable of stopping on a dime. The main difference between The Fairly and other fourth dimensional beings is their size. A Fairly could sit comfortably in the palm of one Human hand while most fourth dimensional creatures are larger than great white whales.”

*****

Eros: Eros began as a flower, was put through MegaPhoto’s black hole where his petals were broken into rivers of pixels. To add insult to injury, he was put through Adobe photoshop where his pixelated arms were liquified. Now, he no longer calls himself Eros, but has assumed the name Unrequited Grief. — location, the corridor between the third and fourth dimension.

*****

Broken Promises

Spotted this “free radical” in the fourth dimension too. It was hanging on the cave wall and jumped down on my back and grabbed me by the throat. There it held me in its clutches and was already telling me how, when and where I fell short. “Who are you?” I managed to choke out. “My name is Broken Promises,” it told me. “Where would you like me to begin, in the middle, the end, or the beginning? — The image appeared when I took a photograph of a plate and pulled the pixels back from the center. The image emerged already speaking. I gave him an eye.

*****

The Creation of Angels: Emerging angels were spotted in the higher realms of the fourth dimension.

.

I died as a mineral and became a plant,

I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels bless’d; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones,
To Him we shall return.

As far as I can figure out, my obsession began with the film Wings of Desire by Wen Wender. Set in Berlin, the film opens with the eye of the camera panning around a huge, golden angel mounted atop a tower. As the camera slowly zooms closer, it becomes clear that someone is sitting on the angel’s shoulder. The film had a strong impact on me and I must have watched it three times.

Months later, my husband, Bill, began talking about a business trip he was planning for early December in Hamburg, Germany. He asked if I wanted to go along so I go could experience Hamburg’s Christmas markets. When I suggested that we also go to Berlin too, he asked, “What do you want to do in Berlin in December?”

“I want to look around,” I said.

*****

We took a train from Hamburg to Berlin and arrived late at our hotel. I went to bed around ten o’clock, feeling tired yet restless. My eyes were closed, yet a vision began to unfold. The vision was more than a thought; the vision had life and detail, and the whole thing steeped in feelings of familiarly:

I find myself standing in front of a small stone tower. The tower sits on the summit of an extremely steep hill. Down below and to my left, a gentle river flows into the north Laughter and bits of muffled conversation drift through the air from the few picnickers sunning themselves along the riverbank. The air is stained with a golden hue, and I think, it’s Sunday afternoon here.

As I approached the tower, I see a carved header over the entrance featuring an enormous ribbon with trailing flowers. I know if I go inside and up a staircase, I will find Michael. I go inside and my focus becomes my feet as I climb the stairs ahead. I notice the details, the smooth shiny stone, from centuries of foot-traffic.

I emerge at the top and recall that this room once held grain. The space is empty now, but I see a young man standing in the middle of this humble place. He is flooded in a golden aura and he is beautiful. He is lean and muscular, with golden blonde hair that curls delicately around the back of his neck. He is wearing a white tunic that cuts diagonally across his bare chest and ends in a skirt mid-thigh. His sandals are straps that tie around his ankles. I rush forward to embrace him and when we touch, something exhilarating and exciting occurs. It feels like the fastest joy ride I’ve ever experienced, but it’s over before I can question it. We embrace in the physical, but the flow was energetic, I move through him. When I reach the top of his head, I complete a backward flip, and find myself standing before him again.

He instantly begins to fade and I stare at him now, attempting to memorize the details of his face. It takes him several minutes to disappear, until the only thing left is the stark impression of a face.

When all was darkness again, I opened my eyes, got up from my bed, and went into the bathroom of my hotel room. I looked in the mirror and my long, red hair was sticking out all over my head as if I had put my finger in an electrical outlet.

The following morning, my hair was still super-charged when I awoke. “What happened to your hair?” asked Bill. “Huh?” he replied. By now, he was growing used to my fantastic inner experiences.

We spent the day touring Berlin. In late afternoon, we reached Brandenburger Tor. Suddenly I saw IT, gleaming in the late afternoon sun at the end of the boulevard, the golden angel atop the tower that appeared in Wender’s film. I became as excited as a child. “We need to go down there,” I insisted.

Berlin is so openly vast, the structures so huge, that what looks like a short distance can be quite far. It took us almost forty minutes to hike down the Strasse des 17 Juni to the Siegessaüle (Triumphal Column), which is surmounted by the golden, Winged Victory. It was near sundown and we were the last visitors that day. We went inside and the stairs were eerily similar to the stairs in my vision the night before.

I wrote Alone as an experiment. The talk in New Age circles was all about finding the higher or greater self. I had explored the concept of the higher self in the best way I knew how—through my writing. During my initial draft of Alone, all I cared about was getting to the scene where Michael was born. As a result, I had to backtrack and create the entire story. I worked on Alone for a long time, but the dialogue between Mellé and Michael stands. For me, Michael encompassed more than a character in one of my science fiction novel for me, he became my inspiration for creating the Janaforma, yet the only glimpse of him was in that vision in Berlin.

We-loo, we-loo, yu-a.

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A Japanese legend says, if you are unable to sleep at night, it’s because you’re awake in someone else’s dream.

I’m in an Athens bathhouse where Candidus and I are about to take a dip in a pool. Candidus looks up at me from the edge of the pool and says, “We are dreaming Sante and we are inside the same dream.”

Socrates wades into the water with his hand bracing the small of his back. He is nude and I can see his body is hard and sense his mind is erudite. When he speaks, his assertions cut like knife blades. “I have declared creations dead with mere diversions inside my mind,” he booms. “You are no accident! No musing! No dream! You are not a flash of light across a warm afternoon stream or something I can forget, like a dream. I have collected volumes on you inside The Library of the Black Language. The consideration I put into you is of a craftsman who takes ten years to carve one sandalwood box. Incarnations of my own thought went into making you. I am not ashamed that I care.”

Candidus paces up and down along the pool edge. His voice is higher, befitting his youth. “Try to understand,” he begs. “This time, I was supposed to be wild. Being wild, I would know a freedom from you, a relief from your tidy perfectionism. That’s why I created denial. Denial is my instrument, my device and dispassionate tool. Lamentably, my denial began eroding like beach sand right after my first sentimental desire for you lodged in my heart.” His face turns strained with a new and incredulous thought. “What happened between us? Why do I yearn for you so? Why do I erect monuments to you in honor of my love?”

Socrates is confident with a ready rebuttal. “I always search for patterns of progress within you, my child. If that is my ‘tidy perfectionism’—as you want to ridicule it—then you have no concept of the transcendent thrills still waiting for you. You are as headstrong now as you were then. This time I attempted to fulfill your every wish, although I warned you beforehand that your forgetfulness was a foolish choice. If that makes me a sentimental old fool for indulging you, then I will wear that witless cap.” Socrates smiles with an expression of secure knowing. “Besides, who are we fooling here? Let’s be honest with each other for once. You know who I am and you have always known. Will you at least admit that I allowed you to tinker with yourself for eons?”

Candidus hesitates searching for hidden traps in Socrates’ statement. “I will concede that point,” he agrees.

“And will you concede that I made every attempt to camouflage your divinity, that thing you claimed prevented the wildness, to make the experiment unbiased?”

“I will not concede that point,” declares Candidus. “I will not concede that point until you tell me what the experiment was supposed to be.”

Socrates is generous, like a good father. “Is that all you want to know? Damn child! I would have asked for the keys to The Library if I were in your shoes. You might have gotten them too!” Socrates wades out of the water and walks up some steps as he wraps a wide girdle around his waist. He begins to leave and then turns back, his bare chest still pink and plump from the hot water. He stands with arms akimbo. He is a man put together from odd pieces that do not match—arms too long and legs too short on that square Mediterranean frame. In the comfort of his oddness, he manages to appear graceful. “Long ago, there was a debate between us. You took the side that one needed to be wild in order to create and I took the side that one needed to be completely conscious to do it well.”

Candidus looks as if a multidex is computing inside his head. “So my wildness is an illusion because I am forever a conscious part of you?”

Socrates bows with exaggerated courtesy. “It has taken us six thousand years to resolve this particular debate. The solution is easy when you truly remember. Do not forget! You remembered inside this dream.”

I did not seek out Winged Victory,
she reached out and took me in me.
Waiting for me in that stone room
at the top of the stairs,
her envoy and I became one.

Only after that December night did she reveal her true glory.
I saw her as needles of light, peeking out between two sharp mountain-peaks.
In one hand she held a green-speckled apple and in the other a radiant star.
Mornings, she would drop yellow sunlight upon my tabletops.
Afternoons, I held her cup of rose-infused tea.
Toward evening, I’d glimpse her skirting the kitchen floor with a breadcrumb in her mouth (food for the hive).
One apocalyptic midnight, she draped along a dank gutter
showing me that she was pregnant in those who turned away.

For years, she flirted with me behind this self-embroidered veil
Flowing and ebbing into the quiet sanctuaries of my mind.
Now, through nights as thick and dark as heartwood
I see her cushioned upon an ocean of her own tears.
Ancient hair, like wisdom, is a steady flame around her face.
Last night, I saw her clearly again when her doves flushed and scattered.
White wings opened as she rose from her pedestal and took flight around the world in humble prayer.

Amber, Rajastan, India: The Sheesh Mahal (Palace of Glass), considered to be one of the world’s best Chambers of Mirrors. Built by King Man Singh Ji in the 16th Century for his queen.

The queen loved the stars by was not allowed to sleep outside at night, so the king directed his architects to create a chamber for her that would mimic the nighttime sky. They say that the light of only two candles will reflect and magnify in this chamber until it is drowning in the light of a thousands stars.

I marvel over the millions of people who must have gazed into those thousands of tiny mirrors since the 16th Century. The mirrors seemed like sirens, peddling their visions to any random passerby. “Come see!” they each beckoned. “Tell us what you see of yourself in me.”

That night, I experienced a vivid dream. The dream spirits exercised their sense of humor with me, in more ways than one. They toyed with my silly vanity. They mocked me and remind me that I still am The Fool who enjoyed the easy path.

The dream opens and I’m standing on a balcony at the Sheesh Mahal. I look through the viewfinder of my camera, trying to focus the lens on the monkeys swinging from tree limb to tree limb. I hear music drifting out of the jungle and stop what I’m doing and look at the scene directly for the first time. It’s organic and now I smell the earth and vegetation. The scene is a breathtaking sight of vivid jungle greens, scarlet flowers, and happy creatures. I never question the incongruity that the Steve Miller Band is singing, The Window, somewhere out there in the jungle among the frolicking animals.

Ask my baby what she wants to be. She’ll say a monkey swinging in a tree. Ask my baby what she thinking of, She’ll say there’s nothing greater than love.

Look through the window.Tell me what do you see?A beautiful planet, peace and harmony . . ..

Another person stops for a moment and tells me that it is time to move on. I’m not ready, I think. I remember that I left some personal belongings behind in the hotel room but now it’s too late to retrieve them.

I now go inside to the Chamber of Mirrors for the express purpose to have a look at my face. I feel tired and think, I probably look terrible. However, when I look in the mirror, I see that I look better than I’ve ever looked before. Then something starts happening to me as I gaze in the mirror. In the mirror, I see a tiny white light in the center of my forehead. As I watch the light, it grows brighter until it obliterates my physical face, but I can still see the light is starting to extend down my body, like a sword. When it reaches my feet, it flashes outward until it consumes me.

The following day I leave for Jaipur and discover I have forgotten my magnifying mirror in the hotel in Amber. Now I can no longer look at myself closely or put on my eye makeup. Instead, my attention goes outward where my empathy is put to the test.